Alan Deino

510-644-1295

Alan L. Deino was born in 1952 in Los Angeles, California. Deino received his B.S. in Chemistry and Geology in 1975 from the University of California, Davis and his Ph.D. in Geology from the University of California, Berkeley in 1985. His graduate studies focused on the geology of the Great Basin of the western United States as revealed by the geochronology, chemistry, and paleomagnetism of gigantic ash flow eruptions that blanketed the area between 20 and 35 million years ago. He joined the Institute of Human Origins (IHO) in 1985, and led the development effort that produced the world’s first fully automated 40Ar/39Ar dating system in 1987. Deino continues his chief responsibility for software and automation engineering, which have helped make BGC’s argon laboratory the most productive in the world. Deino’s research efforts have included extensive work in the Rift Valley of East Africa aimed at understanding the chronology of hominid evolution and climate change; calibration of the 40Ar/39Ar dating method by reference to proxy records of earth’s orbital cycles; eruptive history of the volcanic hazard-prone Naples region of Italy, and many other areas of application of geochronology spanning virtually all continents.